Sidecar Bonneville Land Speed Elite 50 build

[Revolutionary]

[Revolutionary]

Had a great weekend - though short. Left home Thursday night, drove all night then arrived at the track in Ohio Friday morning. Unloaded, went through tech and got in line.

First pass - no body work on and 100 main jet - 46.3mph
Second pass - all body work on, 102 main jet - 52.6 mph
Third pass - all body work on, 103 main jet - 59.7 mph

End of Friday

Saturday morning arrived at the track 8am, perfect weather, 50 degrees, overcast, high pressure, slight tailwind. Changed to 105 main jet and hoping for 63-65mph. The bike ahead of me (in pic below) was gunning for the overall track record over 247mph and laid it down about 3/4 mile out. Broken arm and leg and a helicopter ride out. Killed the timing lights and the rain set in - so that was the end of my racing... No 60mph for me
On the plus side, there was a guy with an Aprilia RS50 there which we know is really fast, he gave my friend a ride and they were only doing about 42mph peak, so I feel pretty happy about my 59 with an outrigger.

[Revolutionary]

Also - thanks Graphite! the Polini pipe works great. I tweaked the curved outlet pipe to run out the back of my rear fairing and wrapped with heat tape. Works great!

[MrJumps]

Can you run nitro, like as in an rc car? Like 40% shot through an nipple on the mani, chilled 40% would be like a 75hp jet on a dry system. Ive read about the rc guys using chillers to cool the race fuel they use because it leans it out a tiny bit. can I also add to the idea pile? cut up the stock bars and put an lighter bmx clamp and bars on it a little forward that way you can get more lean. You also can lighten the flywheel and bell, cut the mag out completely.

Sorry if I have missed that you already did things of this, but I just had a brain storm.

I have an clamp and bmx clamp i can mail you for cost of postage.

[Wheelman-111]

Greetings:

Rounding up, I'm giving you 60MPH! Well done!

Looks like a Studebaker Avanti coupe next to the streamlined 'cycle? Not a common pace car.

[ped]

Hi Rev. Man that's scooter looks so cool.
Sorry to hear about the other Rider.
Thanks for posting the photos they look great.

[benji]

I got a question about your oko 21mm, is it a powerjet carb? If so have you blocked off or removed the power jet? Alot of guys here do because they say it causes rich fuel mixture at high rpms, but it sounds like your too lean up top or too fat in the middle, a power jet should help w that. Also a large collection of needles and adjusting them goes along way, as wheelman mentioned.

[Revolutionary]

I haven't forgotten about you guys. I'm leaving on Thursday to head to Bonneville for the World Of Speed.

I have the turbo system up and running great. No guesses what it will do on the salt at altitude but we will find out on Saturday! Pics to follow...

[R1Titan911]

[kuromi]

Good luck on the salt!

[Revolutionary]

It's been too long since I have been on here and I realize I never posted after going to Bonneville.

What a great week! After a 22 hour drive from Dallas to Bonneville, my wife and I met up with my father and mother in law who would spend the next several days with me on the salt.

We set up our pit area between a couple of 200+mph cars and got strange looks as we unloaded the 6' long scooter from at 18' trailer. "you're gonna race that??" "yep"


After unpacking everything, we towed over to tech inspection - you are not allowed to drive any race vehicle under its own power except on the race course... Inspection was interesting. We were right next to an absolutely amazing stretched out sidecar motorcycle that was shooting for 240+mph that week. Tech was surprisingly good, the only item being that we needed to tighten up the fuel cell cap - it was a cheap plastic thing that had swelled out and would not tighten up well. I put a hose clamp around it and solved that problem.

We then went back to the pits and dropped everything to join the Drivers Meeting and then the Rookie Orientation, both mandatory. After all that hubbub, we loaded the scooter up and went over to the short course (3 miles) to make some passes. At Bonneville there are typically 3 or more courses - 2 long courses (5-6 miles) and a short course (3 miles). Some good years they have 4 courses to get more people down. All rookies and all vehicles going under 175mph must run the short course.

[Kustomkarma]

And then what happened? I'm dying to know how you did.

[Revolutionary]

We were fortunate the short course had almost zero line all week. The longest wait we had was four vehicles. Awesome! The plan was that I would make a few passes to make sure everything was running right, then hand the reins over to my Dad for him to make some passes and hopefully set a record. The way it works is that you must run from the start line to the 1 mile marker, then they time you beginning at the 1 mile marker through the 2 mile marker and average that number to get your speed. They also do that between 2-3 miles, but we have no need to go that far. We are maxed out by 3/4 mile.

I suited up, fired it up and got about 100 yards out before it started cutting out, so I peeled off the course. The density altitude there was about 7800 feet and my carb was way off. I took out a bunch of jet and lined back up for another pass. This time it was great. ran 49.1mph average between the 1-2 miles. Steady power and everything was good. Since this is an open record, I could theoretically take it to impound and back it up the next day, but I wanted that for my dad. I wnet ahead an made a second pass with a minor jet change to see how it would do, and it ran 48.4mph. Still pretty decent.

I had my dad (81 years old) suit up and hop on it. He literally has never until this second ridden a bike with a sidecar. So he is a bit apprehensive. He lined up and let her rip. Well that may be an exaggeration. He ran 30 mph. But hey - he made a solid pass on the Bonneville Salt Flats! I had him make another pass to get a little higher, and he ran 39.6mph - great job! This meant he qualified for a new record and we needed to head to impound for the scooter to spend the night.

The next morning, all record qualifiers arrived on the salt at sunrise (beautiful) to make the first runs of the day. We were the slowest one there, but not by much. There was a diesel streamliner that qualified at something like 54mph. We towed over to the course and lined up to make our return run. Solid pass at 37mph for an average speed between the two runs of 38.3mph. Good enough! Now back to impound for engine teardown and inspection.

In impound, they make you take the head off the engine and they measure bore and stroke to verify engine size. They also check a few other things to confirm you meet all class rules. Upon meeting that, they sealed our engine so we would not have to tear down again the rest of the week. Time for a beer.

[Revolutionary]

The celebration was great in that we got my dad at 81 years old a motorcycle land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats.



Now it was time to put his wife of the bike... We changed classes by going to a spec fuel class and then we were able to try for another record. Nadine suited up and as a "youngster" cranked the throttle a bit harder. She made a few test passes as I tried different jetting, but no real improvements. She then ripped off a 44.3mph pass. good enough for a record qualification! We went to impound and found out that rain was predicted for the next day, so they let us all run later that afternoon for backups. We were in impound for a record low time of 18 minutes. Nadine backed up her run at 43.3 and set an average record of 43.8mph.



me making a pass with Nadine as my shade...

[Revolutionary]